


The Lady of the Valley

by Evandar



Series: The Kings of the North [4]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Absent Parents, Character Study, Gen, mild PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-18
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2018-03-02 00:23:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2793038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evandar/pseuds/Evandar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sigrid is quite sure she doesn't like Elves. After watching a pair of them massacre Orcs in their house, she's not sure how any of her family <i>can</i> like them. She finds Dwarves, on the other hand, to be much less deceptive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lady of the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Hobbit Reverse Bang 2014, inspired by the art of Lynndyre.

Tilda likes the Elves. She thinks they’re beautiful, and Sigrid has to admit that that’s true. They’re pale and graceful; fierce and fair, and when the sun sets they glimmer like stars in the night. Her Da’s a bit enchanted with them too. There’s an Elf that comes to visit him, Tilda says, and though Sigrid’s never seen it for herself, to hear Tilda talk it’s like Da thinks that Elf hung the moon. 

It’s hard. She knows that she should be happy that he can feel that way, if he actually _does_ since everyone knows Tilda’s got a bit of an imagination in her, because she remembers how bad it was after Ma died and how much he changed, but she doesn’t think she _can_. She’s not sure if Tilda really remembers what happened when those Orcs attacked, or if she’s blocked it out somehow, but Sigrid does. She remembers the Orcs; remembers the smell of them and the sound of them, but Orcs are supposed to be frightening and that’s the problem. _They_ ’re the monsters; Elves are supposed to be light and fair and as wonderful as they look, but she remembers so perfectly clearly just how easy it was for those two Elves to slaughter the Orcs in their house.

Miss Tauriel could heal as easily as she killed, and with the same pretty smile curving her lips like it didn’t matter which one she chose to do. The male Elf, the one who left, she’s seen him around the camps sometimes, armed to the teeth and fierce-eyed even as he laughs with his comrades. 

They remind her of the mousers that used to run around town and the way that they’d play with the mice and the rats – toss them around and bloody them up before eating them or not – before going to sit on a barrel or a windowsill, pretty as you please, and begging for a good stroke...at least until they decided otherwise. Tilda used to come back with thin, bleeding scratches on her hands and big smiles on her face.

Sigrid doesn’t like cats. She’s quite sure she doesn’t like Elves either. They’re too deceptive for her, and she’s busy enough as it is trying to make a home for them in a ruin to try and decipher what she’s sure she doesn’t want to figure out at all.

Da is trying. He does what he can while he’s there, but the problem is in actually getting him to _be_ there. It’s just like it was in Lake Town, really, but instead of working on the barge it’s meetings that’re taking his time. Meeting with Kings and Wizards and all sorts, because killing a dragon has made him a King himself. Sigrid supposes that that makes her a princess of some sort, but she doesn’t feel like one. She still does the cooking and the cleaning, and the prettiest dress she’s ever owned is one that used to be her Ma’s and that had to be taken up because Sigrid’s still a lot shorter than she was. She still worries over Bain and runs after Tilda because she’s the only one who can; her Da’s too tired, too stretched and stressed to do it himself.

It’s selfish, she thinks, to be lonely, but she is. She wishes sometimes that she didn’t have to do so much. That Bain would stop running off with his friends and spending all his time ‘hunting’ when he hasn’t bothered to take a bow with him to make the lie plausible. That Tilda wouldn’t keep getting into trouble by listening to things she shouldn’t and repeating them when she _definitely_ shouldn’t.

She’d asked Da about his Elf last night, and she’d been laughing until the look on Da’s face made her stop, and Sigrid… Well, Sigrid had served dinner in silence and gone on with her chores while Tilda shifted on her seat and bit her lip, and while Bain stared between his little sister and their Da with a baffled look on his face. She’d hated it. Sometimes she wished that she’d never even heard of Elves, let alone seen any. 

She prefers Dwarves. It’s strange to say that, since the Dwarves were the ones who brought the dragon out of the mountain and started all this trouble, but she does. She’s seen them around Dale a few times, much like the Elves, but the Dwarves seem more decent. Or, rather, more genuine in their reactions. If they don’t like you, they’ll say it – or, at least, grunt and grumble in lieu of conversation until you give up and leave them alone; they have weathered skin and calloused hands and wrinkles at the corners of their eyes, and in comparison to the marble skin of the Elves, they seem almost soft.

No, that’s the wrong word. They’re not soft. They’re tough as nails. They seem more _alive_.

Some of the Dwarves from – she _thinks_ \- that company that caused all the trouble often comes down from the mountain. It’s funny that she doesn’t really remember one of them, given that he’s got an axe embedded in his skull, but she doesn’t. She only thinks he’s one of them because the Dwarf with the funny hat is always with him and she knows he definitely is: he was in her house the night the Orcs came. They sit together on a ruined wall and the one with the hat tells funny stories about far off places to an audience of displaced children. He smiles and laughs and waves his arms as he speaks, and the children are always so happy to see him and so happy to be entertained – and he keeps his stories clean, so they’re entertained suitably – that even though he’s one of _those_ Dwarves he’s welcome in Dale. After all, if the little ones are happy, then what’s the harm? They’ve got to scrape together some happiness from _somewhere_.

The one with the axe never speaks. He sits and carves instead. Scraps of timber are shaped into beautiful toys between his thick fingers, and when they’re done, he’ll weigh the toy in his hand for a moment and cast a look over his friend’s – relative’s? – audience before passing it to whichever child he thinks will be most pleased with it. He’s a gentle soul, Sigrid thinks, and for all that he looks fierce and terrible, he’s got the kindest eyes she’s ever seen.

Sometimes, when she’s got a moment between her chores, she’ll sit with the children to watch and to listen. Once, she brought some of the darning and mended an apron while the one with the funny hat spoke about red moons and fur traders and mountains that lead down to the sea.

She got a carving that day. A little flower, small and sweet, which she keeps in her pocket like a charm and clutches in her palm when the tension gets too much. A little lily of the valley – her Ma’s favourite flower, and something she’s seen painted on old hand-me-downs from Dale when it was first settled; a lily of the valley for the Lady of Dale.


End file.
